Here's How You May Really Feel About Your Husband Once He Becomes a Dad

On a recent Sunday, my daughter's late nap bumped her bedtime to later than usual, and my husband and I needed to find a way to run down the clock. So, I insisted on a family outing to Ikea, which I learned upon our arrival, is actually a tried and trued parenting hack. Seriously, the store was completely overrun by parents who did not GAF. Hemnes dressers and Poang chairs took the place of monkey bars and swings, the aisles casually clogged by strollers. The place was new parent utopia where your kid could relatively safely just be, if only because everyone else was doing the same thing.

We were letting our 1-year-old make faces in the mirror at herself in the newly renovated bath showroom when we saw another couple with a baby in tow.

"Oh, you have a brand-new one!" I enthused with a wave to the mom pushing the empty stroller while her husband cradled the tiny boy.

The woman smiled back and told me that her son was 2.5 months old. And also, she was dying to get out of the house, so she suggested an Ikea outing. Judging from her beautiful, tailored dress and stylish shoes, I assumed that she had nailed this whole parenting thing in record time. (Also, she had already figured out the Ikea "playdate," whereas it had taken me a whole year to stumble upon this greatness.)

Then, I asked her — as I ask anyone who has ever gone through the thrilling, exhausting process of raising a child — how she was doing.

She immediately took my arm and pulled me aside. "Can I ask you something?" she said. Without even waiting for a reply, she blurted out, "Did you start to hate your husband after you had your baby? Will I ever not hate my husband again?"

And my heart broke a little that no one had told this woman one of undeniable truths of parenting: There are so many fleeting but burning and acute moments when you will hate your partner with the kind of vigor that you once reserved for people who chew with their mouths open.

This other new mom must have been psychic. Surely, she wouldn't have asked me this unless she already somehow knew I had felt surging, seething anger toward my husband over many innocuous things during our first year of parenthood. Like when he brushed his teeth so loudly before bed that he woke the baby. When he closed the back door too loudly and woke the baby. When he forgot to close the baby gate and our dog ran upstairs and into our child's room just as she had gone down for her nap ... and woke the baby. There was the time he didn't fasten our kid's diaper securely, and we both ended up covered in poop. And the morning, I kid you not, when he got himself a bowl of cereal and sat down for breakfast while I kept our daughter distracted with a puppet show.

But you will never know rage — searing, visceral rage — like when someone who has slept through the night tells you they are tired. Even more so if this person happens to be your spouse. My new Ikea friend was dealing with this exact situation.

"Why does he keep telling me how tired he is?" she asked. "How could he possibly be tired, and why would he say that to me?"

All I could do is squeeze her hand in solidarity. "You won't always hate him," I promised her. "It gets better."

She looked at me skeptically.

"I totally hated my husband at first too," I added. "And so many friends of mine told me they went through the exact same thing."

Less than two months after I had my daughter, my wise childhood friend opened up about her struggles with postpartum anxiety. She was constantly anxious, panicked, operating under the assumption that somehow she was going to do something to ruin her child for life — and as a result, she ended up believing her husband was public enemy no. 1.

In the moment, it is impossible to see any signs of magnanimity in your spouse. ​I believe my friend's exact words were: "Even though I know he was trying to be helpful, I found that I wanted to strangle him." My friend herself noted that it took months for her to fully realize that her beloved husband had not actually become the devil. Which is why she wanted to warn me that I wasn't alone if I ever felt the same. Her warning made me feel grateful, validated, and not alone or insane. She had given me permission to experience and process the emotional onslaught that is juggling your marriage with parenthood for the first time.

My friend had explained to me that on top of the hormones, anxiety, and just general worry about caring for a small human you love more than anything, becoming a parent makes you realize how needed you are — by your baby, partner, home, and pet. For many moms, there's also an employer needing you back at a job after your (frequently unpaid) leave. And your friends need you, the texts detailing every sartorial crisis or brush with a rude coworker piling up. ~Everyone~ needs you, but suddenly you are acutely aware that there is seemingly a finite amount of you to go around.

Whether accurate or not, in the fog of motherhood, you feel a heightened sense of inequity, thinking, Surely, there is no way that my husband feels as needed or pulled in as many different directions​ as I do. You might feel so angry you want to punch a pillow. You might feel so sad that all you want to do is sit in the shower and cry. And yeah, you might feel like ripping into your partner, because he did something like eat cereal or take a shower and damn it, what you wouldn't give to eat cereal or take a shower without an hour of planning needed to make that happen first.

These tiny moments of irritation build and build until you look at the person you love and think, When did I start hating you, and how do I make it stop?

The beauty is that — unless your husband truly isn't even trying to help — you don't have to do anything really. Eventually, you start sleeping more. You start eating meals again. You may even occasionally shower. And most miraculous of all is that, in time, you realize that while the weight of being needed doesn't ever really lift, you don't have to figure out every little nuance of parenting immediately. You come to grips with the fact that all you can do is do your best — and that means setting priorities in whatever way feels right to you.

And most importantly, you learn that your partner only wants to help. That diaper that wasn't put on securely? He was trying to let me nap. That door that closed too loudly? He was taking out the trash. 

OK, so he swaddles differently or doesn't cut up bananas the way you do. It's all good — he's just trying to learn to be a parent too. You realize there can be more than one "right" way to do any given thing — and life becomes a whole lot more relaxed and fun when you learn to adapt and embrace variety.

So, no, you won't hate your partner forever.

Not to mention that a dumb noisy toothbrush, which I couldn't care less about today, is nothing compared to seeing him take our daughter to pick blueberries and wildflowers in our backyard. To hearing him happily quack along with our daughter when we go visit the ducks at the park. And to seeing her face light up every single time (no, really,  every. Single. Time.) he enters a room. All these moments outweigh all the irritating ones and remind you why you love your partner. And the best moment of all is when you see your partner look at your child with complete adoration and love, and realize that there is, in fact, one other person who knows exactly how you feel about being a parent, and you're looking at him.

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